MWP and RSCAS Conference on Inequality

Contemporary Approaches to Inequality in the Social Sciences

5-6 May 2010 at Villa La Fonte, European University Institute

Inequality is a classical subject for historians, economists, sociologists, political scientists, legal scholars and political theorists. Causes, justifications, temporal changes, and patterns of inequality are major research questions in all these disciplines, and have recently received new attention. We aim to discuss and link these different perspectives on inequality in an interdisciplinary two-day conference, to be held on 5th and 6th of May in Florence. The conference is a Max Weber Postdoctoral Programme project, and is supported by the European Report on Development at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAD-ERD), both based at the European University Institute (EUI). In order to guarantee that different disciplines truly engage with each other, most panels will themselves be interdisciplinary, and each day will end with an interdisciplinary round-table discussion.

The conference will be prepared through a series of reading group meetings, at which aspects of the topic of inequality will be discussed from the viewpoints of all involved disciplines.
The Reading Group takes place on Wednesdays, once a month at 14.00, Villa la Fonte, Sala A

Conference Programme

Short Biographies of Conference Speakers (In alphabetical order):

Fabrizio Bernardi is Professor of Sociology at the European University Institute, while on leave from the UNED, Spain. His current research interests lie in social stratification, inequality in educational opportunities and educational returns.

Jernej Letnar Cernic is a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute. His research interests are in human rights law, international criminal law, and transitional justice.

Nai Rui Chng is a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute. He works on contentious politics, and politics of regulation and development.

Kimberle Crenshaw is Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and the Columbia Law School, New York. She is a specialist on race, gender and the law. A founding coordinator of the Critical Race Theory workshop; co-editor of Critical Race Theory: Key Documents That Shaped the Movement.

Holger Döring is a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute. His research interests are in comparative politics, mainly political institutions and issues of representation.

Giorgia Giovannetti is Professor of Economics at the University of Florence and visiting Professor at the European University Institute, where she acts as Scientific Director of the European Report on Development. Her research interests include macroeconomics, political economy, international trade and development economics

Silja Hausermann is Lecturer at the University of Zürich and was a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute in 2008/09. Her research interests are in comparative politics, comparative political economy and welfare state regimes.

Stephan Klasen is Professor of Development Economics and the head of the Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research at the Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen. His research interests include microeconometric investigations of changes in inequality, measurement and interpretation of poverty and inequality, and vulnerability in income and non-income dimensions.

Ramon Marimon is the Director of the Max Weber Postdoctoral Programme and Professor in the Economics Department of the European University Institute. His research interests include macroeconomics, political economy, and the economics of science and innovation.

Walter Muller is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Mannheim and affiliate of the Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality, Stanford University. He is a central proponent of European cross-national comparative research on education and training systems, and on the role played by education in determining people's life chances.

Johan Pottier is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. His regional expertise is in Africa, more specifically Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo. His research interests and expertise include rural development, food security, ethnic conflict and post-conflict rehabilitation.

Leandro Prados de la Escosura is Professor of Economic History at Universidad Carlos III, Madrid. His current research interests are economic freedom in historical perspective, inequality and well-being in Latin America since independence, and the rise and decline of Spain (800--1850).

Martin Scheinin is Professor of Public International Law at the European University Institute. He works on public international law, human rights law, comparative constitutional law and the law of countering terrorismEuropean University Institute

Christian Schemmel is a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute, and Research Fellow at the University of Frankfurt. His reseach interests are in contemporary normative political theory, mainly social justice and the political value of equality.

Paul Segal is a Development Economist and Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and New College, Oxford University. He works on global inequality and poverty, on growth and the distribution of income in resource-rich countries and on energy economics.

Cornelius Torp is a Marie Curie Fellow at the EUI History and Civilization Department and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. His research interests include the history of globalization, nineteenth and twentieth century German and British history, economic history and methodologies in the social sciences.

Seda Unsar is a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute. Her research focuses on historical institutional analysis, globalization, redefinition of state and democracy, justice and identity.

Jonathan Wolff is Professor of Philosophy at University College, London, and the Director of UCL's Centre for Philosophy, Justice, and Health. He works on a wide range of topics in political philosophy and theory, including equality and disadvantage.

Fulong Wu is Professor of East Asian Planning and Development and the Director of the Urban China Research Centre in the School of City and Regional Planning at Cardiff University. He is working on China's urbanism and urban development, urban and regional governance, urban poverty, and social spatial differentiation.